Gaining altitude: India's Nov YoY domestic air passenger traffic rises over 65%

New Delhi, Dec 17
Easing Covid-related restrictions as well as lower infection rate and faster economic recovery accelerated India's domestic air passenger traffic growth by over 65 per cent in November on a year-on-year basis.

Besides, pent-up demand and low base too pushed the air passenger numbers higher during the month under review.

According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the country's scheduled domestic flight operations ferried 1.05 crore passengers last month.

In November 2020, the traffic numbers stood at 63.54 lakh.

Domestic flight services had resumed on May 25, 2020 after the suspension of operations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in end-March.

However, during the second wave of the pandemic in 2021, limited civil aviation operations were permitted.

On a sequential basis, the sector had ferried 89.85 lakh passengers in October this year. "Passengers carried by domestic airlines during Jan-Nov 2021 were 726.11 lakh as against 556.84 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering annual growth of 30.40 per cent and monthly growth of 65.50 per cent," the DGCA said in its November data report.

Furthermore, the report said that the overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines in November was at 0.74 per cent.

"The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of November 21 has been 0.74 per cent."

In addition, during November 2021, a total of 554 passenger related complaints had been
received by the scheduled domestic airlines.

"The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of November 2021 has been around 0.53."